How Motherhood Changed Tina Muir’s Approach to Running

The sun hadn’t yet risen in Disney World on Saturday, January 12, when Tina Muir, 30, powered through Epcot to complete her final stretch of the Disney Half Marathon. She broke the tape in 1:19:45, more than three minutes in front of the next female competitor, holding up her arms in celebration while confetti rained down.

To most spectators, she probably looked like an obviously talented, yet approachable, runner, dressed in a sparkly blue tutu and having a blast. And that’s exactly what Muir, a former pro runner from the U.K. who now lives in Lexington, Kentucky, was going for.

Tina Muir wins the Disney Half Marathon in 1:19:45.

Tina Muir

“One of the reasons I love this race is that you don’t know who’s running it,” Muir told Runner’s World. “There are no starting lists, so the winner could finish in 1:10 or 1:25. And no matter you end up, you can’t be upset, because you’re running in Disney World. How can you not enjoy a race at Disney?”

Recovering from burnout

For the past year, Muir has been reacquainting herself with running for enjoyment—not for time, recognition, or to look a certain way. During her professional career from 2013 to 2016, she had spent way too long “running for the finish line,” she said.

The stress of the 90-mile training weeks and frequent races took its toll on her body: For nine years straight, she suffered from amenorrhea, or the lack of menstruation, which can happen when our bodies don’t have enough energy to maintain a normal menstrual cycle.

“I’d lost my love for the sport. Going into every run, I’d think, ‘I don’t want to do this.’”

“Part of the reason I stopped running professionally was that I wanted to get pregnant,” said Muir, who wrote about her decision to retire for Runner’s World. “But I’d also lost my love for the sport. Going into every run, I’d think, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ I wasn’t sure where my career was going as an athlete.”

Coming in terms with her mental and physical burnout, Muir—who holds PRs of 16:08 for 5K, 33:24 for 10K, 1:13 for half marathon, and 2:36 for a full marathon—quit running cold turkey in March 2017. For the next three months, she didn’t exercise at all, she said.

She ate without restrictions, indulging in the burgers, fries, and sweets that she worked to avoid throughout her running career for fear that they’d slow her down (after races, though, she would binge on these foods, she noted). Eventually, her menstrual cycle returned, and she discovered she was pregnant later that spring.

Falling back in love with running

She eased back into the sport mindfully, making sure to keep the enjoyment in it. After a few weeks of getting her legs back under her, she worked up to a max weekly mileage of 31 miles—just a third of what she used to do as an elite—divided up into three to four days of running, sometimes with walking breaks. She estimated the distances she ran by time and judged her effort by feel.

“I never looked at my mile pace,” said Muir, who to this day doesn’t keep track of her mile splits, but rather runs solely by overall time. “I knew that if I kept track of how fast I was running, it would be too easy to fall back into that competitive mindset.”

On January 18, 2018, she and her husband, Steve, welcomed their daughter, Bailey Grace, into the world. For the next six weeks, Muir said she took a break from running, focusing all of her attention on her new duties as a mom. In the spring, she dipped her toes back into the sport, but as many new parents can probably attest to, running at this point happened “whenever I had time.” When her baby was pacified, she’d slip out for a 20-minute or half-hour run. “But if I didn’t get a run in, I let it go,” she said.

Over the summer and into the fall, Muir increased the length of her runs under guidance from Steve (who doubles as her coach), fitting in the bulk of her miles in the early morning. A typical day started like this: Muir woke up when Bailey rose at 5 a.m., and the two would play and have breakfast until Steve got up around 6. Then from 6 to 7 or 7:30, Muir would run, making loops around the streets of Lexington. Though she never listened to music as a pro—she considered it too much of a distraction then, she said—she ran with it now, giving herself a mental break from the baby by getting lost in pop and British radio.

By late fall, Muir was back hitting 77-mile weeks—a number not too far off from her former days. But while she was doing speedwork (a favorite workout was a 20-minute tempo followed by 5 x two-minute pickups), fartleks, and long runs, she never felt forced to do the miles or perform exceptionally well in workouts.

“I don’t have that drive to dig down deep in workouts anymore,” she said. “But I’m okay with that. I have other things on my plate. Running is probably third on my list of priorities.”

Forming better relationships with family and food

Caring for Bailey and herself comes before running. “We now feed Bailey whatever we’re eating for dinner, so that holds us accountable for making healthy meals,” said Muir, an avid cook who shares many of her recipes on her blog, Running for Real.

“I never intentionally restricted what I ate when I was an elite, but I definitely wasn’t eating enough for all the training I was doing,” she said. “I thought I always had to be at ‘race weight.’ Food was a reward system for me.”

Muir continued, “I’ve gotten to a place now that when I’m hungry, I’ll eat. And when I want a burger and fries, I’ll have it.” The night before Disney, she dined on fish tacos.

A key part of Muir’s comeback, it seems, is her frankness with herself. She knows she’s not as fast as she once was; she doesn’t care to see her splits. She doesn’t have the same guts-or-glory mindset in practice and races. At one point in her training for Disney, she asked her husband if he thought she could beat her 1:13 PR in the half.

“He told me ‘no,’ I couldn’t run a PR,” she said, laughing. “Which was true. My life’s not set up to run a PR right now.”

Still, despite her determination to run for fun, Muir won’t ever totally squash her competitive nature. She went into Disney wanting to win, and when she did, “it was one of the highlights of my running career,” she said.

“That run represented so many things for me: that I can come back to the sport after taking a long break, gaining weight, and having a baby. And even better, I can enjoy it.”

Hailey MiddlebrookDigital EditorHailey first got hooked on running news as an intern with Running Times, and now she reports on elite runners and cyclists, feel-good stories, and training pieces for Runner's World and Bicycling magazines.

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